FRONTLINE/World

While trekking in Nepal in 1998, American John Wood saw that many children couldn't afford to go to school and that schools in the poorest rural areas had a chronic shortage of books. It was a transformational experience for Wood that spurred him to start a literacy program called Room to Read.

Samantha Grant heads to Chennai in southern India to explore the illicit kidney trade. Traveling between India's high-tech center of Bangalore and the slums to the south, Grant spoke to government officials, doctors, kidney brokers and donors to try to find out why so many people are still getting paid to give up their kidneys even though a law was passed 12 years ago to regulate the practice.

Who hasn't dreamed of one day living on a far-off island in the South Pacific? But there is trouble in paradise, especially if you live on an island nation as narrow and flat as Tuvalu, where the average elevation is a mere six feet above sea level. When you live that close to the water's edge you pay very close attention to the ocean, especially if it begins to rise.

Karzan Sherabayani is a Kurdish exile living in Britain. Twenty-five years ago, Sherabayani escaped from Iraq, where he had been imprisoned and tortured by Saddam Hussein's secret police. In January 2005, he returned to Kirkuk, to vote in the first national elections since the overthrow of Saddam's regime. Swiss producer Claudio von Planta went with him to film the story for the BBC.